In the Tutorial, you start in a nice and cozy castle which has lot of explanatory signs and stuff to play around with. It covers all of the basic rules common to all games for Minetest like basic movement, mining, building, items, etc.
Collect gold bars for completing each lection.
After completing this tutorial, you should be ready to play “real” games in Minetest. Have fun!

Principles of this tutorial:

Be generic, teach stuff which applies to pretty much all games/mods/etc.

Don't teach things that are too specific for any particular game, like Minetest Game

The tutorial has been fully translated to German. Other partial translations are available, with Dutch and Greek being mostly finished.
If you want to provide translations, read this.

The mods “tutorial” and “supplemental” fall under the MIT License.
The mods “default” and “creative” falls under the GNU LGPLv2.1 for the code and the CC BY-SA 3.0 for artwork.
The mod “darkage” falls under the MIT License.
The mod “mpd” falls under the MIT License for the code and the CC BY 3.0 for the music.
The mod “castle” falls under the MIT License (the author allowed me an exception).
The mod “arrow_signs” falls under the CC BY-SA 3.0.
The mod “areas” falls under the GNU LGPLv2.1 (or later).
The mod “cottages” falls under the GNU GPLv2 (the author allowed me an exception).
Everything else falls under the MIT License.

See the README.md file in the tutorial itself and the respective mod directories for details.

Last edited by Wuzzy on Fri Sep 27, 2019 01:09, edited 62 times in total.

Just tried the map. Nice idea. Had to go full screen though and still some text was cut of. Make sure the text can be read at 800*600 or whatever the default is at startup. You might also mention that navigation on a mobile device might differ from a pc.

Was looking for the sneak elevator or a nice waterfall to swim up.

Maybe something like "follow the sand line" might be usefull for navigation.

Now all sections I mentioned in the first post now have a more or less proper representation in the world.

New/reworked in-world sections are:

Viscosity

Spikes (Blocks that damage you)

Mining

Building (very simple for now)

Smelting

Crafting (stuff is now in boxes)

Some sort of primitive “Outro”. Currently just more text in a room. Needs work.

The tutorial also handles death. You can die, but that is planned in and you get more explanation about death and spawning. :)
I guess the player still loses stuff, I need to fix that.

Remaining quirks: It is currently possible to “break out” by placing blocks cleverly. With the introduction of the Mining and Building section, I give the student blocks. Sadly this allows the student to place the blocks in a way that basically allows to get almost everywhere on the map. That alone would not be a problem, but the student could fall off the map. I somehow have to think of a solution.

Another quirk: I want to place items intentionally by dropping them. But it seems they just disappear after a while! :(
Minetest never did that before. I think dropped items are normally ought to last forever. I will write about this problem in a different subforum, too.
This is bad, I actually wanted to place an “apple snatcher” (an example tool with increased range).

Reply to twoelk:

“Sneak elevator”: Hmmmm, nope. I guess you refer to the sneak glitch, right? Well, a glitch is a glitch. I don’t want to explain a bug and especially not how to abuse it in the tutorial. Will the sneak glich ever be fixed, by the way? I think the sneak glitch is just dumb.
Feel free to write an article for the community wiki. ;-P

Waterfall: I might consider that. More importantly I also should explain liquids more throughly, because they behave rather strange. Especially the difference between source liquids and flowing liquids. The tricky part is how to prevent the student from messing up the tutorial accidentally.

Maybe something like "follow the sand line" might be usefull for navigation.

I guess I’ll add some arrow signs. There is an useful mod with such signs somewhere. I intentionally chose not to make a 100% linear tutorial. Luckily, not everything depends on everything.

You might also mention that navigation on a mobile device might differ from a pc.

Damn it! This is something important. Mentioning it would not suffice, the best solution would be that the tutorial adapts itself to that, with inserting the correct keys. For now, I just focus on PC. Mobile comes later, but I might need some friendly pointers to useful webpages. I don’t use the mobile version.

Had to go full screen though and still some text was cut of. Make sure the text can be read at 800*600 or whatever the default is at startup. You might also mention that navigation on a mobile device might differ from a pc.

Oh crap. This is really bad. It apparently happens because Minetest quite aggressively scales everything down when the height is reduced. The actual solution would be a formspec element for a non-editable multi-line text which makes automatic line breaks. Minetest does not have this yet, so all line breaks have to be manual. This is quite a pain in the ass. The formspec is extremely small in that resoultion. Let’s see if I can fix this with some formspec magic. xD

Last edited by Wuzzy on Thu Sep 25, 2014 22:53, edited 1 time in total.

I think sneak elevator is so established on several servers by now, that it can be considered a "pro-tip" just as swimming up vertical waterfalls may not be realistic but extremely usefull in our little blocky game.

Just as you could consider "falling of the map" not a problem but an oppertunity to explain how to get out of a "I'm stuck" situation with the /spawn command.

I'm going to try this map on my MC-fan nephew <evil-grin/>

(I wonder if you could detect if somebody is falling and pop up a message for the player in distress describing the /spawn command)

I don’t know if that sneak slitch is really that established. I also don’t know if it is generally agreed upon developers to keep that sneak glitch.

The spawn command is definitely not going to be in the tutorial. It is not part of builtin. Also: A command just for respawning? That’s just silly. This could be done in many better ways: Adding a formspec element, adding it as an activatable item, etc.
I think the normal game should be playable without any commands. Imagine you would have to say “/jump” to jump. xD IMO commands should be only neccessary if you want to manage the server, change settings, test stuff, cheat, etc.

Also: This tutorial is specific to singleplayer. And if I start teaching commands, I also have to start teaching privileges, which would go way too far for a singleplayer tutorial. And Tutorial World is already large enough IMO. ;-)

But I can understand that there may be some interest in Minetest’s weirdnesses. Maybe that weird stuff can go into a second tutorial.

Tutorial World for the non-glitchy non-cheaty singleplayer stuff (don’t worry, waterfalls are planned).
Tutorial World 2 for all the weird unexpected glichy or cheaty stuff. I could also introduce fly mode etc. Tutorial World 2 also could be far more open than Tutorial World.

But I don’t want to think more about Tutorial World 2 until Tutorial World is finished.

Items are now placed properly and don’t get deleted. This was important for the Pointing section

New and improved texts in the “outro” room.

New sign roughly explaining Minetest itself and a friendly reminder that it is not a finished game engine. :)

You get automatically teleported back to the starting point when you are too low (i.e. when you fell of the castle).

I fixed the 800×600 resoultion bug by doubling the formspec width. This may be overkill and half of the formspec is empty. But better this way than having text cut off. As soon as Minetest gets a proper multi-line formspec element, I should include it.

My current TODO list (green text means “finished”):

Section about liquid sources and flowing liquids. Maybe also about placing liquids.

Change texts for the mobile version of Minetest. I need help here, I have no clue how the mobile version works.

Arrow signs or something like that for better orientation

Better craft examples which do not involve placable items.

Show warning when world is started in multiplayer

Add possibility to manually return to the starting point.

Last edited by Wuzzy on Sun Sep 28, 2014 04:02, edited 3 times in total.

Version 0.4.0 is there! The download is as always attached to this post.

Changelog:

I changed the crafting examples.

Arrow signs from the mod [arrow_signs] (modified) throughout the tutorial to help navigation (most sections can be visited quite independently, that’s why I’m not enforcing a fixed route)

The using section now has an actual example block to use. It is a small surprise. :-)

Warning message is shown when a player joins when it is not a singleplayer game (the tutorial would work poorly in multiplayer)

You can manually teleport back to the starting point at every time by clicking a button in the inventory menu. This is a safety measure in case a player somehow manages to get stuck.

Now I am about to get out of ideas what to add next to the tutorial. Which probably means the tutorial will hopefully be finished.

If you have a basic topic for which you think it should go into the tutorial, please post here.
Now I think the tutorial is now complete enough for some testruns. I have made a testrun for 0.3.0 and fixed some falsehoods. I would appreciate other testers, of course.

If you find any bugs in the tutorial, please post here. Bugs also include falsehoods in the sign texts. If a sign would say “It is safe to fall 300 nodes deep.”, that would be a bug. ;-)

Replies!

i1abnrk wrote:I like that you assume I have never played a block miner game before.

If I would not assume that, the tutorial would be besides the point, because a lot of potential players could not understand it.

twoelk wrote:

Wuzzy wrote:
...
Add possibility to manually return to the starting point
...

like the command /spawn present on many servers? The one that just teleports you back to the original spawn point? ;-P

@Napiophelios: Oh, you mean that set_physics_override. It turns out that sneak_glitch=false does not work when sneak==true. But I need to have sneaking activated, I have an entire tutorial section for that.

But I am not realy sure what you are trying to suggest here. For what exactly should I use Achievements?

@Minetestforfun: 30 min is already pretty long, whew. Yeah, there is a lot of theory in the tutorial, but actually Minetest is also quite complex and, admittedly, unintuitive. I think I add up to two more short sections: One about liquid types and short one about blocks in general.
After that, I think I won’t add more sections, the tutorial would be way too long then; Other stuff should go into Tutorial World 2, if I actually ever start this one. I will probably also rework some sections here and there.
The Mining section needs better examples. There are currently only the default blocks; what is missing are more examples on dropping stuff. Also more than just pickaxe. I think the mining section is very important.

And if all that stuff is done, I think I will decorate the tutorial a bit and use some different nodes, maybe also some other textures. All that grayness is rather boring. But nothing too fancy, to avoid destroying performance. I know there are some nice medieval mods around there.

And after that: Cleanup: Delete dead code, delete unused nodes and textures, etc. And finally doing a last testrun.

I think that should be a comprehenshive TODO list needed for 1.0.0. :-)

Wuzzy wrote:@Napiophelios: Oh, you mean that set_physics_override. It turns out that sneak_glitch=false does not work when sneak==true. But I need to have sneaking activated, I have an entire tutorial section for that.

I dont really know anything about it, I just seen a mention of it in Casimir's Carbon game.

Wuzzy wrote:But I am not realy sure what you are trying to suggest here. For what exactly should I use Achievements?

I thought you needed a way to avoid hanging signs everywhere;
You can alter/edit the Achievements mod to relate messages to your players when they do specific things;
It could get complicated but you could avoid the monotonous clutter of signs at every turn.
just a thought.

@Napiophelios: I understand. Using achievements for that seems a bit awkward. I rather use my own scripting, tailored to Tutorial World.

Now for release of version 0.5.0.

UPDATES:

Added a new short section “Special Blocks” (shown in screenshot). Demonstates falling nodes, attached nodes and jump disablers. Feel free to suggest another special node, if it is common, part of basic Minetest and worth the effort.

Updated section “Waterfall”. It now explains flowing liquids and liquid sources. There is also a nice switch to toggle the waterfall on and off. :-)

New glass texture

Deleted unused textures, sounds and nodes

I think from now on, I will not add more sections to the tutorial. I feel like now the tutorial is pretty complete.
Anything new should either update an existing section or go into Tutorial World 2, if that one will be ever made.

Collecting first and last gold ingots pops up a dialog. The last one allows you to stay, leave or to teleport to the “Good-Bye room”, a room with additional but optional, non-gameplay relevant information.

Introduction dialog is now only shown automatically on the first start

Removed some data trash.

Fixed a lot of spelling and factual mistakes in some signs.

The mining section now has some example cubes of different materials and different drop types to test. Drop types are: itself, other block, probability-based and nothing. I think this little list is already comprehensive.
And the mining shaft from earlier versions is still there, but it has been moved and it now there just for fun and optional.
The dialogs for the gold bars are possible by writing a file into the world path. This file is created on the first start and remembers wheather you have seen these special dialogs already.

A minor bug:

Minetest writes this in console when starting the map:

Minetest wrote:Irrlicht log: Could not load texture:
Irrlicht log: Could not load texture:
Irrlicht log: Could not load texture:
Irrlicht log: Could not load texture:

This does not appear on other worlds. Any idea what’s going on? Why does the log not mention a texture name? On the other hand, I could not find any node without a texture in the game.
However, this bug is so unimportant, it does not break the tutorial at all and it is by no means a release blocker.

Technical caveats:
Due to Minetest’s nature, it is not possible to easily “reset” the tutorial, that means, to return it back to the state the world was shipped. If you change something in the world, the change is probably permanent, no matter what. To truly reset the tutorial, you would have to delete the world and reinstall the fresh world file again. But I don’t plan to do anything about this by myself, I think this is an issue with Minetest core to handle with worlds.

Collecting ladders and signs is not part of the tutorial, you are doing it wrong!
How did you even do that, they are all unminable, I thought.

You have to read the signs. If you read and did and understood everything what they said, you are done. The signs in the good-bye room are optional.
You can collect 13 gold ingots on your way, one of them is a lump which has to be smelted (also mentioned on the furnace sign). The location of the gold ingots is listed on the first sign in the good-bye room. This is optional and only a reminder to help you keep track. The gold ingots are not intended to be hidden. If you collected all gold ingots, a special dialog pops up.
Maybe I can come up with a better way to keep track of your tutorial progress. But I didn’t have any good ideas yet. :-/

You have to play with creative mode disabled, by the way. If it is on, a warning pops up.

Please explain further what exactly you did. If there is some confusion about the tutorial, I obviously should fix it.
In case you overlooked a gold ingot, please tell me which one. (Or: which gold ingots you’ve already collected ).